Nagasaki cathedral blesses a bell that replaces a destroyed by the American atomic bomb
Tokyo – A cathedral in Nagasaki blessed the last room to finish its restoration almost 80 years after being destroyed by the second American atomic bomb fell on Japan: a reproduction of its lost bell restored by a group of Americans.
The new bell was blessed and called “St. Kateri Bell of Hope ”, by Peter Michiaki Nakamura, Archbishop of Nagasaki, at Urakami cathedral during a ceremony that attended Thursday by more than 100 followers and other participants.
The bell should be suspended inside the cathedral, filling the bell tower for the first time, on August 9, the anniversary of the attack.
The American bomb which was abandoned on August 9, 1945 fell near the cathedral, killing two priests and 24 subscribers inside among the more than 70,000 dead in the city. Japan went, ending the Second World War a few days later.
Nagasaki’s bombing destroyed the cathedral building and the smallest of its two bells. The building was restored earlier, but without the smallest bell.
The restoration project was led by James Nolan Jr., who was inspired after hearing the lost bell when he met a local Catholic follower during his visit in 2023 in Nagasaki. Nolan gave lectures on atomic bombing in the southern city and its history on Catholic converts which have gone deep under the ground during the centuries of violent persecution in the feudal era of Japan, to collect funds for the restoration of the bell.
“I think it’s beautiful and the bell itself is more beautiful than I never imagined,” said Nolan, who was at the blessing ceremony, after testing the bell. He said that he hoped that the bell “would be a symbol of unity and which would bear the fruits of the promotion of hope and peace in a world where there is a division, a war and a wound”.
Professor of sociology at the Williams College of Massachusetts, Nolan is the grandson of a doctor who was part of the Manhattan project – the secret effort to build the bombs – and who was part of an investigation team that visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after the bombings.
Nolan, based on the documents that his grandfather left, wrote a book “Atomic Doctors”, on the moral dilemma of doctors who participated in the Manhattan project.
